Once again my Premier Element 8 can't open any project on Windows 7 (64-bit). This is same problem that happened to me 6 months ago. I reported it to the online Adobe support, but got no help. Eventually I worked around it on my own. Now the problem is back and I can not open any project, even after rebooting. The behavour that I see is that I can open a new or old project, but the Premier window shows-up as having zero size. The bug has something to do with the Premier program thinking that the window size should be zero. The program shows-up in the active task list, and the Alt-Tab key shows Premier window has only a window title bar (where as other active programs show-up as a thumbnail image of their window contents), and the system taskbar also shows the Premier program as active but only as a window title bar (see attached image below)

When I reported to the online Adobe support forum 6 months ago that I had worked around the problem, the answer was something like "good that you fix it", BUT Adobe did not seem to be interested in understanding and fixing the problem. They just seem relieved when customers can figure-out work-around on their own. I see that another peron just reported this same problem on the Adobe forums, and got the same treatment. He also found a work-around, and the support person replied when "that's nice". This really bites me where it hurts. I'm burning non-productive hours because of their bugs, and they don't care enough about the bugs to get engineering to fix them. It's things like this that make me look for another software vendor.

But today I really do need to work on my video project. If there is a document work-around for the "Premier show a zero-sized window" bug, PLEASE let me know about it.

Thanks for looking at this on Saturday, and for your question. What I mean by a "zero sized window" is that Premier's window has been created and the program is running, but when I give Premier focus nothing is shown on the screen. I know the program is running because I can see it on the Windows taskbar, in the Alt-Tab list, and in the task manager's list of running programs. When I use the Windows taskbar to alternately show and hide the window, it behaves normally, except when I show it nothing shows on the screen. Also, when Premier starts up, I do see it loading the project, but when the project loads the window disappears. Premier has this annoying design of starting with its window maximized, and then automatically resizing the window to what it thinks is the size that I want. When the bug is active, the size seems to be zero, or minimized, or off the screen, or who knows what. Just not anything that I can see. The little thumbnail that Windows 7 shows of running programs on the taskbar makes be think the window has been resized so that it is zero pixels wide and zero pixels high.

In my earlier report of this bug, I described it as "minimizing to the taskbar" because that is what it appeared to doing at that time. Here is a link to my earlier report:

That thread has screen snapshots that show the visual atrifacts of the bug on Windows 7. I experienced the same bug again this morning. The workaround that I had done last year did not work this morning. Here is what I did to recover this time:

Things were still not quite right. In fact the bug appeared to still be there, but all of a sudden it started showing me the window after the project was loaded. Sigh. I will never launch that little startup program again (the one behind the desktop icon), and only open ".prel" files directly. Not sure if that will help or not, but at least it takes one variable out of the startup procedure.

I wish that I could tell you how to reproduce the bug, but in fact I do not know what I do to provoke it. My PC is

- Dell XPS9000 (Intel i7, 3.33GHz, 12GB ram, 4.5 TB disk)

- Windows 7 Ultimate

- Two 24 inch LCD displays

- Runs several Adobe programs (like PS, LR, Acrobat).

Don't get me wrong: I love Adobe software. You are the best in the graphic arts industry. That's why I buy and run your stuff. But when I have a deadline hanging over my head, and I have to spend 1/2 day getting the software to just come up, I get crazy and want to herd feed animals for a living! Maybe I'll have to do that if the economy does not improve in 2011...